Christmas Shopping

My mantelpiece is filling up fast, but you can't have a village without a shop-come-postoffice, so that's what I've made this time. And another two storey dwelling, so the shopkeeper can live over the shop. I treated the top storey like I did the previous ones, covered the door area and made a window, but this window is the one I cut away from the lower storey, where the door now is ( more later...)

This one has a thatched roof, which is just white felt sprayed with Adirondack Espresso spray ink. I cut it slightly bigger all round than the roof pieces, then stuck the felt down and folded over the excess and stuck  that with ds tape. That gives the rounded profile you get on thatch, not a sharp edge.  Warning! If you try this yourself don't be fooled into thinking your felt is dry. I left mine for an hour, and gently waved a heat gun at it, but as I was sticking it down I found it was still pretty wet. Going to have brown fingers for a day or two!

I wanted to make a large bay window for this shop, so I made a little box sized to cover over both the window and the pre cut door. The window is acetate, and at the back is a snippet of Tim's seasonal stash papers which I stuck on after I had 'dressed' the window. There's a little shelf (folded card) for a tree to sit on, and the tinsel is also Tim's. I heated that with a heat gun to curl it up a bit as it was a bit too spiky.  The billboard above the window is also from the seasonal stash, as is the poster in the side of the building.

I needed to cut away the left hand window to make a door (and used this spare window on the top storey), and the door is also acetate with a little silver pen added. It's a bit modern for the building, and I'm now making up stories about the shop keeper having heated discussions with the town council planning department about it.  Sorry, it was 2.30am when I finished this house, after a bad day atvwork, and I think I was overtired.  Maybe I will make another door, but it depends on what the planning officer decides.

So here's pictures of the finished shop.  Must get on with Christmas shopping...

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation....

It's MONTHS since I did a blog. Months. No excuse really other than after I moved my craft room upstairs to the spare bedroom, I totally lost my crafting mojo. In didn't like being so isolated so rarely went in there.  I've not got a big house but I felt so out of the loop up there. It was also a bit too compact, so it had to be kept tidy (and I'm a mess magnet).  And there was no room for spreading myself about, which I like to do, with 2 or 3 projects on the go at once but that was a no no too. And no room for any crafty buddy who wanted to come over and play.

Problem.

This was solved on October.  My youngest son Tom graduated as a building surveyor on July and has been working as such for a firm in the middle of Edinburgh since May.  He and 2 of his ex-university mates decided to take a flat together in town, which meant I could take over the now spare sitting room that my boys used to have.  Hurrah!! Whoop!!!  But also a little sad as we are now empty nesters.  Hey ho. Swings and roundabouts.

It's taken a bit of time to get it as I wanted, and required a trip to ikea for another desk and storage shelves, but I'm sooooo happy now.  Here are some pics.

New desk area, and shelves.  The ikea cd rack holds all my paints, pens etc, and also space for sissix dies etc. ink pads are in old cassette shelves on my new desk.  I spray painted the multi cubbyhole shelving white, to match in with the rest.

The spare desk, for spreading out on or for craft buddy, and the metal wall board that I store my Movers and Shapers dies.  This is now hanging on the wall within easy reach of my diecuttting and embossing area:

I've also got a sofa for lounging about on (an important part of the creative process I find!) and other cupboards for storage.

It's all fab.

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Since I moved everything in, which was in the middle of November, I have busy on lots of projects, so here are some of these.

It was my sister Ailsa's 60th birthday in December so I made her a memory assemblage using a tim holtz mini configurations book. We went to London for a girly weekend, theatre, shopping and met up with friends for dinner.  Fab time, had by all.  This is the book, using 7 Gypsies papers and various TH ideology bits and pieces,

Cover

Inside the book I have filled the boxes with all sorts of bits and pieces that are relevant to her life.  She loved it.

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I saw a lovely Christmas burlap panel on Paula Cheney's web site, a site I follow as she has some lovely ideas on it, so I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing them. 

http://www.oneluckyday.net/2013/08/christmas-burlap-panel.html 

I ended up making a few of these as Xmas presents for friends.

This one isn't finished, but don't have a photo of the final outcome,

I coloured the tim holtz christmas charm with alcohol inks and then sealed it with glossy accents so it looks like an enamelled charm.

The papers I used for these are a mixture of Tim Holtz Seasonal Stash, some leftover paper from a christmas project from last year (can't remember what paper this was), but mostly pictures from a a John Lewis carrier bag!  This is it:

 

I've got loads of this left over, so will use it again next year.

Another present i made was a model of my son Lucas' kitchen.  His partner Jill gave me a box and

suggested that I could build a kitchen in it, and she would love something like that.  After such a forceful hint, I could hardly refuse.  Even I was surprised how well it turned out.  The box is roughly 8 x5 inches, to give an idea of scale.  I used white foam board, greyboard and some dark mirror card, and made some Fimo bread and eggs.

The top one is the real kitchen, and my version is underneath

Finished item.

That'll do for this blog.  I've got another one to do about the 12 Tags of 2015....